Solar Radiations can cause Brain Damage in Future Astronauts

The mother star of our solar system is the Sun and it is radiating energy in the form of heat and radiations of different frequencies. It is a known fact that these radiations are effectively filtered out and only the benign and harmless radiations reach the Earth.

However, with mankind planning deeper rendezvous into space, the knowledge about the effects of radiations on the human body becomes very important. The sun emits radiation which has a potential to cause cellular damage to humans in space.

When lab animals were exposed to highly energetic charged particles; much akin to the galactic cosmic rays that astronauts would encounter during long space flights, serious neurological damages and associated cognitive impairment were observed in the test animals. The above conclusions were reached by researchers at the University of California, Irvine.

Lead author Charles Limoli, professor of radiation oncology in UCI’s School of Medicine said, “This is not positive news for astronauts deployed on a two- to three-year round trip to Mars. Performance decrements, memory deficits, and loss of awareness and focus during spaceflight may affect mission-critical activities, and exposure to these particles may have long-term adverse consequences to cognition throughout life.”

At present, the astronaut’s rotate in shifts of six months in the international space station. However in March, US astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko started the first year-long mission at the orbiting research outpost to test the impact of longer spaceflights on the body and mind.

NASA is planning to send humans to Mars in 2030. However experts doubt the feasibility of these plans since the technology is nowhere near readiness nor are the impact of long space sojourns on human body known

Current research has been published in journal Science Advances and lab rodents were subjected to charged particle irradiation for a period of six weeks at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.

It was found that the radiations had affected the transmission of signals among neurons and impaired the brain’s communication network.